A person’s identity and experience—race, gender, age, and ability; how much money someone has; and where a person lives, works, goes to school, or visits—should not affect their access to convenient, safe, comfortable, and affordable transportation.
This Transportation Equity Platform translates this value statement into policies and budgets that will move the Washington DC region and each individual jurisdiction toward an equitable transportation system, via a commitment to:
- Advance and fully fund Vision Zero efforts that aim to eliminate road deaths and serious injuries, with a special focus on vulnerable road users.
- Address the barriers and gaps that prevent our communities and public transportation systems from being truly accessible to persons with disabilities.
- Ensure all neighborhoods have continuous, accessible, well maintained sidewalks on local, arterial, and downtown/business-district streets with hardened roadway intersections and crossings that are safer for pedestrians and users of micromobility devices.
- Ensure all residents have equitable access to affordable, convenient, safe, and reliable public transit.
- Identify and put in place adequate, dedicated Metro funding—assuring frequent service, convenient bus routes with extensive bus-priority routes and dedicated bus lanes, and affordable fares—and fully fund local-jurisdiction transit systems.
- Plan and fully fund bikeway network completion consisting primarily and to the maximum extent feasible of separated, protected bike lanes and grade-separated trails.
- Fund the completion and ongoing maintenance of multi-use trail networks such as the National Capital Trail Network.
- Oppose highway expansion, an expensive temporary fix that induces demand rather than solves congestion, and reduce or eliminate car-parking requirements and car-parking oversupply.
- Support shifting traffic enforcement to automated methods that reduce enforcement bias and eliminate escalation risk, and work to put in place regional citation-enforcement reciprocity.
- Support policies that facilitate creating new housing to meet regional needs, including via zoning reform that expands the housing-type and economic diversity of “residential detached” neighborhoods, and with an emphasis on preserving and creating affordable housing and mixed-use, transit-oriented development.
- Expand commuter and regional rail service including MARC and VRE to make it connected, frequent, reliable, and available outside of rush hours.
By adopting this Transportation Equity Platform, candidates, officials, and organizations signal that they will develop and advance policies and budgets that center mobility and transportation justice for their jurisdictions and the region.
For information about the Transportation Equity Platform initiative, or if your organization would like to cosponsor, please contact WABA Advocacy at advocacy@waba.org. The developers and cosponsors of this initiative are the Anacostia Parks & Community Collaborative, DC Families for Safe Streets, DC Transportation Equity Network, Greater Greater Washington, Ward 8 Bike Alliance, Ward 8 Woods Conservancy, and Washington Area Bicyclist Association. Adoption of this platform by a candidate for office or an elected official does not indicate candidate endorsement by any of the cosponsoring organizations.